On the day that there arrived a packet of CDs for review, a packet
containing the present disc, I was reading my way through the
often tedious pages of a volume published in London in 1778 (The
Fashionable Tell-Tale) trying to find an anecdote about Milton
which it was supposed to contain. I got distracted by a familiar
story about Tartini, which I had just finished reading when the
post arrived. I opened up the packet and found this disc staring
me in the face. The coincidence is too neat - some might say disturbing!
- for me to ignore it. This is what I had just been reading:

“Tartini,
a celebrated musician, who was born at Pirano in Istria, being
much inclined to the study of music in his early youth, dreamed
one night that he had made a compact with the devil, who promised
to be at his service on all occasions … during this vision …
at last he imagined, that he presented the devil with his violin,
in order to discover what kind of musician he was; when, to
his great astonishment, he heard him play a solo so singularly
beautiful, and which he executed with such superior taste and
precision, that it surpassed all the music which he had ever
heard or conceived in his life. So great was his surprise, and
so exquisite was his delight, upon this occasion, that it deprived
him of the power of breathing. He awoke with the violence of
his sensation, and instantly seized his fiddle in hopes of expressing
what he had just heard; but in vain: he, however, then composed
a piece, which is, perhaps, the best of all his works: he called
it ‘The Devil’s Sonata’, but it was so far inferior to what
his sleep had produced, that he declared he would have broken
his instrument, and abandoned music for ever, if he could have
found any other means of subsistence”.

A student of comparative
mythology might discuss the analogy with the legend of Faust;
a cultural historian would see in the story a resemblance to
such Romantic fictions as Coleridge’s account of the creation
of ‘Kubla Khan’; a cynic might suggest that Tartini would, in
later times, have made a good career in advertising or self-promotion.
All three would agree, surely, that the story is a good one.
And is the music good? Yes, and it is illuminated - or perhaps
one might say more aptly, darkened - by knowledge of the story.

The fascinating
music of the sonata has a kind of introversive galant
quality in this interesting performance, a reading which resists
any possible temptation to mere showiness. Tartini was, by all
accounts, a famously quiet and secretive man, and such a flavour
is imparted to this performance, simultaneously brooding and
ominous, graceful and refined. Here, as has not always been
the case with performances of this piece, the listener’s interest
is primarily psychological and emotional, not technical. There
is an intensity here – and elsewhere on the disc – which packs
a considerable punch without ever being overstated. Indeed,
this ‘trillo del Diavolo’ does sound like the reluctantly expressed
and troubled feelings of an essentially reclusive man. Rodolfo
Richter, playing a 1674 Guarneri, plays at the tipping point
between self-communion and performance for others, and the continuo
accompaniment is beautifully judged, economic and supportive.
The opening larghetto is a particular delight, full of darkling
elegance. The third movement (marked ‘Sogni del autore: Andante
– Allegro assai – Il trillo del Diavolo’) relates most specifically
to the famous anecdote and again both soloist and ensemble work
are of the highest order, subtle, powerfully expressive in a
kind of tight-lipped fashion. In the booklet notes, William
Carter makes the claim that in the case of Tartini’s works the
“virtuosity rises out of a desire to express rather than amaze”
and writes of Tartini’s music having an “intense pictorial inward
gaze”. That puts it very well – and the performances justify
the nature of the claim.

The story of Dido
has inspired many fine musical works – from the pens of Purcell,
Berlioz, Cavalli, Clementi, Hasse and many others – and Tartini’s
marvellous ‘Didone abbandonata’ deserves a place of honour in
the roll call of such compositions. It can perhaps be thought
of as an instrumental version of the baroque solo vocal lament,
in a line of descent, that is, from pieces such as Monteverdi’s
‘Lamento d’Arianna’, Cavalli’s ‘Lamento di Cassandra’ from his
opera La Didone, Luigi Rossi’s ‘Lamento di Zaida mora’
or Carissimi’s ‘Lamento della Regina’. The English listener
will surely think of Purcell and the most famous aria from Dido
and Aeneas. The three movements of Tartini’s ‘Didone abbandonata’,
although they don’t have the benefit of verbal text, are on
an expressive par with any of these vocal laments. It covers
the gamut of relevant emotions, beginning with the complexities
of memory, hope and fear in the opening ‘affetuoso’, the angry
recognition of the truth of her abandonment in the central ‘presto’
and the terrible bleakness of the closing ‘allegro’. This is
masterpiece which ought to be better known and this is a splendid
performance which puts a wonderfully persuasive case for the
piece.

The other works
by Tartini included here are perhaps not quite so special as
these two, but they are eminently worth hearing … and rehearing.
Tartini is a searching and rewardingly complex composer whose
music – as opposed to just his legend – deserves to be more
widely familiar.

The Palladians –
a new incarnation of the group we previously knew as the Palladian
Ensemble – add to this selection of works by Tartini one of
the sonatas of Francesco Maria Veracini. This is no mere ‘filler’,
its presence serving a real purpose. Veracini made a considerable
impact on the young Tartini when he first heard him play in
the 1610s. Another part of the Tartini story - the ‘biography’
we have of Tartini often sounds as much like myth as history
- has it that Tartini abandoned his wife so as to devote himself
to improve his own technique on the instrument. The admiration
was chiefly, one suspects, for Veracini’s instrumental ability,
rather than for the music he wrote. To listen to ‘Il trillo
del Diavolo’ and ‘Didone abbandonata’ alongside this sonata
by Veracini is to realise to what different purposes virtuosity
can be out. For all that Veracini was a notoriously unstable
man, his music rarely plumbs the kind of psychological and expressive
depths that are charted by Tartini. There is a greater polish,
a shinier finish to much of Veracini’s work; one is dazzled
more than one is moved. Of course, there are moods in which
brilliance is just what one wants – and Veracini certainly provides
that. There is more than just brilliance, of course, but not,
generally speaking as much real emotional substance as there
is in Tartini’s work.

There are, of course,
other excellent interpretations of these pieces – such as Andrew
Manze’s Tartini (on Harmonia Mundi), The Locatelli Trio’s Tartini
(on Hyperion) and John Holloway’s Veracini (on ECM). But the Palladians
stand up pretty well to any of these comparisons. If you have
no recordings of ‘Il trillo del Diavolo’ and ‘Didone abbandonata’
these are amongst the most attractive candidates for purchase.
They can also be warmly recommended to those who want to hear
more than one intelligent and sensitive performance of this fascinating
music. The recorded sound is as good as one now expects from Linn.

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